A safe space to confess whether you panic bought toilet roll

[Peaceshout]

It’s been several years since the pandemic, lockdown, and those early months when the toilet roll disappeared from the shelves in bulk.

Yet despite it all being bought, I’ve never met anyone who panic bought toilet roll. Instead, most people are critical of the toilet roll panic buying. Someone is lying.

Given the time that’s elapsed, now is the time for the panic buyers of toilet roll to come out, admit it, and tell us whether they still have any left in the shed. No judgment, no criticism, just a safe space to unburden yourselves.

AIBU?

I think I agree that it was mainly people just buying the one extra - because you didn’t know if you’d get ill and not be able to go out- that disrupted supplies. It wasn’t really people with trolley loads of loo roll or eggs or whatever. If everyone stocks up just a little bit it has a huge impact.

I didn't, but my now ex H did.

We'd normally buy a 9 pack of loo roll, but he went to the supermarket and came back with a bumper-pack of 36 toilet rolls.

Bear in mind it was just me and him, plus our non-potty trained 18 month old.

I did not but here’s the funny thing. I bulk buy toilet paper from Amazon (for a long and really boring reason)
Anyway I get a recurring delivery of 72 Andrex rolls every 3 or 4 months. I’d had a delivery in early March 2020. So I was probably the most relaxed person around when it came to toilet paper!

I honestly didn't need to panic buy toilet tissue during lockdown, as I had stocked up on it in early February, before the first cases in the UK. I'm not normally this organised, but I've always had a laywoman's interest in viral diseases. I was convinced Covid would spread worldwide, and I wanted to make sure my household would be able to easily obey quarantine regulations if needed.

As it happened, we did end up isolating ourselves for 14 days in March, and I was very glad I'd stocked up on toilet tissue! Still have no idea where we got the virus from, but I'm confident that we didn't pass it on to anyone.

We didn't, and I never had that much of a struggle finding any. Also didn't go in for the any of the other panic buying of pasta etc.
I did work throughout though, so my life was really more "normal" if you can call it that than for a lot of people. We still had loo rolls at work and I managed to order those with no issues either.

Thanks to the prepper threads on here, I'd been stocking up from late Dec / early January. No need to panic.

People were panic buying in the shops. I went on Amazon and had a bale delivered next day. I shared it though.

I always buy it in bulk so I certainly looked like I’d panic bought, but I hadn’t.

Yes, I did, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I thought panic buying was a silly thing to do but figured, if I didn't hoard some, the hoarders might make it impossible to get, so I better make sure I had some extra stored. I have a large family, one with a bowel condition. I prefer to have toilet paper here. There were many times I found the shelves bare of toilet paper, so it seemed sensible enough. No regrets.

I did, inadvertently.

We had always bought loo roll online, a pack of 9 whenever it was needed. When lockdown started, online delivery slots became impossible to get and the website very temperamental. As soon as I managed to get in, I booked 3 slots spread over a few weeks, and had the website auto generate me a standard order. The intention was to secure the slots and change the orders after. Unfortunately, despite regularly trying, I was never able to log back into the system. So 3 orders containing 9 loo rolls then came in quick succession. Felt terrible and offered them around to neighbours, but everyone apparently had enough!

Well I'm a bit of a natural prepper.....back in the Jan of 2020 I was watching China (and then later Italy) and saying to my DH - this is really bad.....and I started getting prepared.

I started quietly accumulating toilet roll popping in a 24 pack to the shopping trolley in Jan - I bought 4 of those from Sainsburys in Jan. This was way before the panic buying started. Supermarkets were operating as usual. Shelves were stacked. There was no supply chain disruption at that point.

By the time the lockdown was announced end of March - we had everything in and hadn't been to a supermarket for about 3 weeks. A completely full freezer, a whole pantry completely stocked, all the toiletries we would need. I'd bought 4 20kg bags of dog food, and more tins of dog food than I could count - we were ready. By end of February I didn't step into a supermarket again for 6 months.

I scheduled a regular slot with Asda to deliver every 3 weeks - it was all very calm for us.

We were absolutely fine, didn't run out of a thing but nor did we have so much that we were drowning in it.

So I guess I did 'panic buy' toilet roll but I did it way before the panic buying started. It just felt like I was being sensible at the time and making sure that we were completely stocked up - incase something happened. At the time I was doing this - I didn't know exactly what 'something happening' would be, if that makes sense? Panic buying wasn't a thing - I just saw myself as 'getting ready'.

Once all our store cupboards were full - we used the loo roll and we didn't order anymore in - we didn't need it. Mostly I felt like being prepared meant when it all went down we had actually removed us from being a burden.

I think people did buy extra loo roll, I think they just don't associate themselves as 'panic buyers' because they weren't punching people to get it or walking out with trolley loads of the stuff.

No, and I ran out a few times. I did see several men, on different occasions, wrangling trolleys out of Aldi with loo roll stacked higher than their heads. Even after it was rationed, my local shops often had none.

I didn't need to panic buy anything else, as I keep at least two weeks' worth of food in at all times. This is because I'm often too unwell to get supplies in, and it served me well then too. The only thing I couldn't get was bread flour! Tried everywhere and everything, ended up ordering a catering pack of absurdly expensive Caputo 001 online. Bloody brilliant flour, but they were charging as if it were gold dust!

I'm generally fairly good at predicting human behaviour, but I did NOT anticipate a pandemic prompting half the world to take up sourdough baking 👀

No because i knew we had a few at the caravan (stored locally) and we could cope with alternatives like kitchen roll
I think i did with hand sanitiser though, I still have quite a bit....

I'm well known amongst my friends for maintaining a high standard of dry goods.
I buy Costco toilet paper and maintained two 30 packs at all times, now with less disruption to the supply chain, I'm back down to maintaining 30 at a time.

I’m a bit of a prepper so had a few multipacks already and didn’t worry about loo roll at all.
I also had a milkman and hired a weekly fruit and veg delivery from a local greengrocer. All in all we were really lucky to have these things.
The fruit and veg box was huge so every week I’d leave loads in the box on my garden wall and send a message to our street WhatsApp group for neighbours to come and help themselves.

Ha! Yes I think everyone did. It was our last supermarket visit in February when I said to DH, shall we get a bread maker. Again - no stock issues. We bought one, we got all the stuff in to make bread and it was great. But I do remember flour being one of the things we couldn't always get in our online deliveries post lockdown.

I thought I was being all unique and clever getting a breadmaker - when I bought it I did not predict that everyone would have the same idea a month later! So not unique or clever just more of a worrier I guess 😂

And yes bread flour was the thing in those online orders that were hit or miss on whether it would actually turn up.

I was stocked up with everything while coronavirus was so new that people were making jokes and memes about it.

I didn’t, but I was so sick of having to traipse to 4 different shops to find any when we needed it. So I took out a TP subscription from a local company and now a box of it arrives every 3 months and I never have to think about it.

No, but we were those awful people who went around several shops and stockpiled baby formula for DD2 because I was absolutely terrified of running out.

I work in a shop and people definitely panic bought toilet roll. And paracetamol. And pasta. Other things too. At one point we had to limit to 2 items per person but they just sent multiple family members in.

We were still getting deliveries in, and the same quantities of stock, but it was cleared off the shelves faster so we often looked empty.

No I didn’t but I don’t feel I really understood the extent of lockdown as I’m a nurse and my life continued as normal, albeit with a mask on 🤣

I totally get this. Sometimes we almost run out of milk. It causes havoc. It's not like anyone in the house has ever had to wait for the milkman and the shops are all shut!

So it feels like quiet anarchy letting things get low. Life on the edge.

I bought a couple of extra packs as we very rarely had much to spare.
I will confess to still having a mahoosive bag of pasta in the cupboard and we did stock up on basics like tinned soup and flour, not excessively so though.
It has made me plan more going forward. Our cupboards used to be fairly bare and I'd be shopping daily on the way home. I always have a good stock of staples now and we could last maybe a fortnight at a push.

No. I did buy a lot of chickpeas and tinned tomatoes though